Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned the Our Future study (also known as the Second Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE2)) at the beginning of 2013. This is one of the largest and most challenging studies of young people ever commissioned and aims to build upon the Next Steps study (LSYPE1), which began in 2004, following young people from the age of 13/14 onwards (Next Steps is held at the UK Data Archive under SN 5545 (End User Licence) and SN 7104 (Secure Access)). The purposes of Our Future are:to follow a sample of young people through the final years of compulsory education; through their transition from compulsory education to other forms of education, training employment, and other activitiesto collect information about their career paths and about the factors affecting them; andto provide a strategic evidence base about the lives and experiences of young peopleIt is intended that Our Future will track a sample of over 13,000 young people from the age of 13/14 annually through to the age of 20 (seven waves). The study currently includes data from Wave 1 to 3 of Our Future. Face-to-face interviews with both the young people and their parents were conducted between April and September 2013 when the young people were 13/14 (in school Year 9) for Wave 1, between April and September 2014 when the young people were 14/15 (in Year 10) for Wave 2 and between April and September 2015 when the young people were 15/16 (in Year 11) for Wave 3.Arrangements for onward sharing of the study data via UKDS are presently being discussed, however, the department would be happy to receive data access requests for specific projects directly in the interim. Data from waves 1-7 are currently available for request. Please email the study team at Team.LONGITUDINAL@education.gov.uk to register interest. Besides the Secure Access version, there is also a Safe Room Access version (SN 7813) available. For the second edition (March 2018), data and documentation for Waves 2 and 3 were added to the study. Also included is a NPD linked data file containing linked pupil-level KS2 results and two datasets to support analysis with missing data for KS2 attainment for pupils who attended boycott schools in 2010. Further information is available in the User Guide.
Main Topics:
The Our Future survey covers a wide range of topics from the main parent, second parent and young person interviews, including:the young person's family backgroundparental socio-economic statuspersonal characteristicsattitudes, experiences and behavioursparental employmentincome and family environment as well as local deprivationthe school(s) the young person attends/has attendedthe young person's future plansThe Secure Access version includes a general survey data file that has similar variables to the End User Licence dataset, plus the majority of sensitive derived, sample, geodemographic and survey variables excluded from the End User Licence file. Some of the most sensitive variables remain anonymised in this file. This file is accompanied by three files of National Pupil Database (NPD) data, which exclude all sensitive variables:school-level census data about the school the young person attended, from 2006, 2010 and 2013, i.e. the years they completed Key Stage (KS) 1, KS2 and KS3; this also includes Ofsted ratings and geodemographic datapupil-level data about the young person's KS1 attainment, from 2006school-level data about the KS1 and KS4 levels of attainment in the school the young person attended, from 2006 and 2013, respectivelyIn addition, the Secure Access version also includes four datasets containing the most sensitive Our Future survey and geodemographic variables, covering:detailed characteristicsincomehealthcareThe survey data files in the Secure Access version include the detailed geographical variables Local Authority Districts and Super Output Areas (Lower Layer). In addition, the NPD files also include Parliamentary Constituencies and Wards (Census Area Statistics).
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for further details.
Face-to-face interview
Self-administered questionnaire
Educational measurements and tests
Compilation/Synthesis
NPD data are collected from a range of sources including schools, Local Authorities and awarding bodies.
